There is some gloom in the land, expressing doubts as to whether the good old USA can successfully contend with all the burdens we face. At one end, there are the negative fiscal figures. The morning news tells us that the federal budget deficit next year may exceed the $500 billion anticipated.
We hear from Sen. John McCain that we are critically shorthanded in Iraq. And we learn incidentally that Iraq's police-training institutes just can't handle the 28,000 Iraqis we proposed to train as policemen.
We are told in a front-page story in The New York Times that President Bush's "compassion" agenda has fallen gravely short of expectation, and that, in the words of one plaintiff, "(Bush's) policy has not come even close to matching his words." That, of course, should not be surprising -- that there should be a disparity between the unburdened rhetoric of the politician and the downed ducks spread out on the floor for us. But there is a special exasperation tracing to the paradox of high unemployment, and work undone.
On education, the indictment becomes fervid. A Times editorial speaks of straitened state budgets resulting in underfunding of education. Legislative "indifference" has led to raised tuition rates. "Some universities have begun to cannibalize themselves by increasing class size and cutting course offerings, making it difficult for students to find the courses they need to graduate." This "downward spiral" began in the 1980s "when many state legislatures began to back away from their commitments to public higher education."
That is not the view of things held by the California Association of Scholars, a branch of the National Association of Scholars. Their spokesman, professor and author Thomas Reeves, sends out what he terms "Heretical Thoughts for a New Academic Year." These thoughts look at the doomsayers on U.S. education and ask truly subversive questions.
Foremost of these is the question, Are too many young Americans bent on higher education as a matter of form, rather than substance? The figures absolutely establish the appetite for college education. In 1960, 7.7 percent of Americans had had four years of college. In 2000, that figure had risen to 25.6 percent. The question being raised by the California Association of Scholars has to do with whether the rewards of higher education are being attenuated by the lack of preparation for college work by many high-school graduates.